Talk:Creature type

Not interchangable with family

"Creature type" can be used to mean army, family or some other non-army, non-family group (such as Charr, Ettins, Yeti, the Shadow Army, Titans, Margonites or Torment creatures). -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 23:54, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Can we have Creature type, creature type, creature Type, Creature Type and plain old Type link to here? Perhaps Subtype, Sub Type, etc if necessiary? --Falconeye 22:15, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Is it just me, or is this more confusing than informative? - and what exactly is the point? What is the rationale behind arranging creatures by "supertype" and where do the supertypes come from? Why are Nightmares suddenly called Nightcrawlers and why are Centaurs a race and not wildlife, when their affiliation is Maguuma Wildlife? .... --Manassas 12:12, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Usage of "Type"

→ moved from User talk:Kirbman#Usage of type

As a heads up, the concept of NPC Type has been a contentious one. On more than one occasion we've tried to clean it up. What we've attempted to do is to categorize NPCs with Type reflecting their in-game mechanics, while species is used for lore.

Technically, those Ogres are categorized as type ogres because they are all affected by the appropriate Of slaying. As players we've called them Jotun and Ettin based on how they look, which we've categorized as the lore based species.

More discussions on this can be found at User:Greener/Sandbox/Animals and Beasts, which I've honestly wanted to get back to, but just have not gotten around to it.

A more general description of all can be found at Creature. G R E E N E R 13:23, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

First off I want to thank you for your courtesy. Your message is friendlier than I expected based on my past experience of responses of to when I try to do something helpful on this wiki.
That aside, I see where you're coming from but I think we can make things a little clearer for the users rather than get caught up in terminological differences between "species" and "type". I decided to change the enchanted armor and ogre categories because they had inconsistencies. I realized that certain creatures were categorized in both a sub-type and a super-type, which doesn't make much sense as far as categories go. The way I changed the pages to yesterday essentially says for example:
An Igneous Ettin is an Ettin, which is a type of Ogre.
rather than
An Igneous Ettin is an Orge and is an Ettin, which is a type of Ogre.
This way they're all still listed as their super-type, just not redundantly. It might help to take a look here to see what I mean. Please let me know your thoughts on this. -- Kirbman 22:42, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Unlike with skills, there are no categories and subcategories with species, they have only two things set: Army and Family. All creatures have an 'army' set, and not all creatures have a 'family' set. And that's all. And we can't make up stuff, since this is an official wiki, not a private game guide. For example, Charr in Prophecies are part of the Charr Army, but not part of the Charr family, while charr in eye of the North are both part of the Charr Army and Family. That's all we really know about how they are saved. In the case of Yetis, 'Yeti' is a lore term, while their species is Ogre, and their army is unkown (although we know it can't be 'wildlife' since they and Tengu attack each other, while they do not attack other creatures). I won't be against an additional 'lore' classification, but please don't change the actual type of the creatures to the one you 'feel' is the correct, since unlike lore species, the Type affects gameplay, like disease and slaying mods. Names and looks don't really matter when it comes to calculations.MithTalk 22:51, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

@Mith After digging around the wiki a bit I found that by army you mean affiliation and by family you mean creature type. I think you might have misunderstood some of this though. First off the Charr in Prophecies are of the type Charr, the individual pages were fixed in 2008 but it seems that the Charr page was never fixed. They are affected by shields with additional armor vs charr, Of Charrslaying mods, certain Ebon Vanguard skills, and Rebel Yell (although you only get energy if you gain exp from the kill). Next, regardless of whether this the official wiki or some private game guide, the information should be correct. "Yeti" is a species, and species are referenced in lore (as Greener pointed out above). The changes I made are based on what things actually are in game, not what I "feel" they should be. You seem to think everything was 100% right as it was, so any changes must be wrong, but things were and still are incorrect and even contradictory. That's what I'm trying to fix. The wiki doesn't get to the state that you seem to revere it at without the dedicated work of myself and countless other contributors making changes to it. -- Kirbman 01:37, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

So I'm reading this while banning bots and watching the Stanley Cup finals, therefore I did not read the above carefully. My main point is that we present the game (to the best of our ability) in a manner which reflects the game (as would be noticed by players). The game does not recognize Igneous Ettins as Ettins, and the mechanics which players use would not see them as Ettins either. Both the game and player would notice that they are simply and only Ogres. Are there two types of Charr? I believe so, and there are a couple of other frustrating exceptions. Ettins/Jotun/Ogres are rather consistent in their Type. G R E E N E R 01:43, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Read over it a little better when you get a chance, its not urgent. And I just did some testing with Rebel Yell and it looks like there's only one type of Charr. I updated the note on that page with my findings. Also, are we really basing type on just Of slaying mods and bounties? Because going by that logic we could say Mursaat, Shiro, Mhenlo, and Fungal Wallows are all the same type. -- Kirbman 01:55, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Still haven't read fully (and feeling bad about it) but I will answer your above question: Yes, we would prefer to use the "Of Slaying", bounties as well as disease to test for Type, though once again there are exceptions to those (such as Undead). Could Shiro and Mhenlo be the same Type? Sure, until we are able to discount them as such. As for Fungal Wallows, I believe disease shows them to be of a different type.

I am very sure you have raised some good points, and having tried to parse through this information before, I am always looking for other perspectives. Currently, I'm looking to drown my sorrows over today's loss with family and friends, so I'll have to address this likely tomorrow. G R E E N E R 03:47, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

When it comes to Rebel Yell, and other effects, it working with all charr doesn't mean it looks at 'type' to tell it's a charr, it may look at 'affiliation', same with some 'of slaying' mods, like the undead one. We know that Charr in Prophecies have no 'type' set because some dev told us so, not because of testing. What it's sure is that 'Yetis' are not 'Yetis', they are 'Ogres' called 'Yeti', like Ibogas are not 'Ibogas', they are 'Plants' called 'Iboga', and Margonites are not 'Margonites' they are 'Demons' called 'Margonites', and so on. EAch creature can have only one internal type set. If the ogre slaying weapons work with a creature, the type of that creature is ogre for sure, so you can't say that them being yetis is how 'things are actually in the game', beucase if you ever see a Yeti, a Jotun, and Ettin and a plain Ogre like the Forge Masters together, and put disease in one, it most probably will spread (it does between Inscribed Ettins and Forge Masters). If you want a lore classification, you have to join the project that is working on one, right now, type is for mechanics. MithTalk 12:52, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

@Greener I forgot about disease but its an excellent way to test to see if two enemies are the same type, assuming you can get them together. Unfortunately we can't use it on non-fleshy foes.
@Mith You've contradicted yourself saying that type determines the Of slaying effects and that the Charr in Prophecies have no type since they're affected by Of Charrslaying weapons. Regardless of how many times you say Yetis aren't Yetis it won't make it true, I'll try to figure out a way to prove that one. I tested margonites with torment creatures and they can spread disease between them, but they have different bounties, which means type can't be the single defining characteristic of the mechanics. You're right about Ibogas though, they're just the mesmer plants that use a certain model. Disease does spread between Forge Masters and Inscribed Ettins? That's not surprising since they all drop jotun items they seem to have been copy/pasted.
Is there a way we could find this stuff in the .dat? -- Kirbman 15:39, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Disease and Edge of Extinction are indeed a 100% safe way to check if two creatures are of the same type, confirmed by devs and all. But they have one limitation: unless Anet adds someday some way to meet them both together, like an arena that spawns random enemies from all over the game, you'll never see most creatures next to each other, and so you'll never be able to for sure if hey have the same type. Well, I can think of one instance with Yeti and Jotun, one Boss that at least looks like a Yeti and appears next to several Jotun during a quest. But well, this particular case may not prove anything, since they could have just used the model with a different type, like with the Vanguard foes.

If you read carefully, you'll see I'm not contradicting myself. Maybe I couldn't explain well enough, but I never contradicted myself. What I meant is that "Of slaying" do not always check 'type'. It's even noted in the of slaying page page. So we have to test for each one, here are some examples:

• We know that all ogre slaying weapons check type, not affiliation, because we've seen creatures with known affiliations affected by them, like the several Stone Summit Enslaved Ettins. Once affiliation is ruled out, only type is left.
• In the case of Undead, we know thanks to Edge of Extinction that Skeletons and Ghouls are different types. But undead slaying weapons work with both. There are other examples, like the Carven effigy elementals. Once type is ruled out, we know it's affiliation.
• In the case of charrslaying weapons, a dev said that Prophecies charr have no type set (and I don't recall any update that changed that, and it's still in the Charr page), and charrslaying weapons affect both, then charrslaying weapons (and any other effect or skill that affects both) must look at affiliation, not type, like undead-slaying weapons do, because otherwise they won't affect Prophecies charr. Considering that they are the ones that can see the code, I'll take the word of a dev as 'final' in this matters. I don't remember where they said that exaclty, but at least it was mentioned here.

And I'm not exactly saying that yetis are not 'yetis', they are indeed yetis we can read their names, alright. What I'm saying is that there is no 'yeti' type anywhere in the game mechanics. So, although for the players there are yetis,; for the servers there is no 'yeti'. They are Yetis only in name, only in lore.

All of this is not made up stuff anyone came up with. It's the only explanation possible based on the known data we could gather.

I hope I could make understand now. If you still don't get it, I hope someone else can explain it to you, because I'll have to give up.

People thought about digging in the gw.dat many times, but all gameplay calculations are done-server side only to prevent cheats and hacking as much as possible, so nothing like that is saved on it, the client doesn't need to know if disease will spread to a create, it will only know that a creature has disease. If such info was in the .dat, The .dat divers would have got that a long time ago, and I wouldn't be asking for some kind of 'scan/libra' skill to check the stats and info from creatures (health, energy, skills, armor, affiliation, type, possible drops, etc) every time the occasion arises. It would be so easier if we had that skill. Oh, gods I hope we get something like that at least in GW2.

What I can't understand is why you want to change the mechanics type replacing it with the lore species instead helping in the species project that classifies them based on lore. I don't see why can't we have both, and they could probably use a hand on making things faster. MithTalk 09:39, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

@Kirbman, thanks for reminding me that bounties are not always searching for Type at the mechanics level. Being that there are only two main variables, those bounties in Torment must be looking for both Affiliation and Type. I believe Konig tried to explain that one to me at some point, which I subsequently ignored for too long (Beasts comes to mind).

I looked at the category tree which you linked to above, and stylistically it is great, and it is "what one would expect" to find in terms of organization. What Konig and I had aimed for previously was to get the relevant data to the reader as quickly as possible. (Prepare for a completely fabricated analogy) That meant that if a player was looking up how to fight that annoying Red Yeti on Shing Jea, they could see that they are mechanically "Ogres", and that a weapon "of Ogre Slaying" would work; additionally, the yeti would not be spreading disease to your pet.

All this being said, a wiki which does not change will soon become inaccurate. While this project has been resurrected a few times over the years, it has never seen itself get completed to a satisfactory point, and may either need to be demonstrated in a different form on the pages, or get left the way of the dodo. G R E E N E R 15:12, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

I'll keep blaming the lack of 'tools' for this. We can't never really know for sure most types and affiliations, and we can't absoltely be bothering developers every time there's doubts. Those that undertake find too many obstacles, and eventually lose the interest or motivation to go on, or it just takes too much time, and they end up having to do something more important with their time and it ends unfinished. My kingdom for a scan skill! MithTalk 20:47, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks guys, this info is really helpful, especially Andrew McLeod's page. It's all a bit more complicated than I had thought. The charr in prophecies must have either been given a type when EotN was launched or the vanguard skills rely on affiliation. Can either of you think of someone who we could ask or a way we could test it? If we could get a dev to help out with this project maybe we could finish it off. I'm starting to think we should include species separately and I think the only way to avoid making a mess of categories is to remove the auto-categories for type and include it for species, and manually add the type category for any exceptions. -- Kirbman 03:16, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

It's both good and bad to know that you've reached the same level of exasperation as we have. The number of times people have gotten to the point of "just wanting to see the source code" is disheartening. As for the categories, their organization is dependant on the quality of information which we can gather, and in too many cases we're dealing with a black box concept.

For me, the discussion gets to the point of either wanting to document the game as the game acts (with some large knowledge gaps), or base it on speculation and player defined concepts. Both have good and bad aspects. The former gives feedback on mechanics while admits gaps and confusing inconsistencies, while the latter fits to what we expect to see and potentially misleads the reader about game play. To add, after dealing with this for some time, I may have just presented you with a false dichotomy without a better perspective. G R E E N E R 05:32, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Alright I'm in the process of changing back the individual creature pages that I changed from Ogre to the species and changing the ones that previously agreed with the way I changed it to. What do you guys think about my last suggestion of adding species to the infobox, removing auto-categorization by type, and adding auto-categorization by species? That should give us proper category trees, I'm just hoping it won't cause some sort of information overload in reading the boxes. UPDATE: They're all of the type "Ogre" now, including the Yeti bosses which were of type "Yeti" even before I made changes. -- Kirbman 19:06, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I think the idea has promise. Most NPCs need a remake anyways. I know that when I was going about editing all of the humans, I had added many "Affiliations" based on lore, completely ignorant of the fact it was a mechanic. The true problem with Affiliation is that it is nearly impossible to test, and our knowledge is based almost solely on tidbits left by Anet employees.

Can species exist on the infobox? I'm sure it can in some way. We could have:

• Affiliation – lore/mechanic/throw-our-hands-up
• Type – tested/known mechanics, otherwise left as "unknown"
• Species – what we as players would like to call them. In some cases we'll get revert wars, but that's true for nearly anything we potentially add.

Your best bet would be to bring this to the NPC infobox and see what others think. Add in your own example of the infobox to help (my coding is not up to par for that). G R E E N E R 05:11, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Here's some links to each of these pages Affiliation, Creature_type, Species, User_talk:Falconeye#Please_stop(on discussion of some of this), and the talk pages of these pages. Best person to consult would be Konig. Kaisha 05:18, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm having some trouble figuring out the Winds of Change enemies. I saw some of the WoC Am Fah fighting WoC afflicted but they don't seem to fight normal Am Fah or WoC Jade Brotherhood. Most people are listing them as the same affiliations as the non-WoC versions (which doesn't make sense for the Am Fah and Jade Brotherhood to not fight) but I've been listing them as WoC affiliation (which doesn't make sense for the Am Fah and afflicted to fight). Any thoughts? -- Kirbman 20:22, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm quite sure that new affiliations were created by Anet in order to get the spawn results they were aiming for, but any documentation you can get on these antagonisms would be wonderful, and could help us tease out other undocumented affiliations. G R E E N E R 02:37, 3 August 2011 (UTC)